


Hello

by Tinyshot



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Game(s), Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 15:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6525295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinyshot/pseuds/Tinyshot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur Maxson/Female Sole Survivor</p><p>It has been twenty years since the fall of the Institute, and twenty years since Arthur Maxson was left behind by the woman he loved. She disappeared leaving no trace and no answers.</p><p>But on the anniversary of the day she vanished Arthur gets a package that might give him some closure.</p><p>Inspired by Adele's beautiful song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello

Hello

A glass of bourbon clicked on the metal surface of the table. The warmth it brought to the chest was familiar, comforting. Soothing. It was the only company he had left after all those years. The alcohol would never leave him, betray him, stab him in the back and leave him wallowing in his own misery.

High Elder Arthur Maxson frowned at the unwelcome thought and took another swig. It gets better with time. The pain was long gone, replaced by feeling of emptiness. A dark abyss in the place where his heart once was.

The silence - though Prydwen was never truly silent, with constant hum of engines and creaking of the bulkheads - was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Arthur groaned. Didn't he tell Knight-Capitain Edwards not to disturb him this evening?

"Come in." He said. Whatever it is it's better be important.

His scowl deepened at the sight of the panting young Squire who tried his best to straighten up for him.

"What is it?" He barked. Poor lad probably doesn't deserve that but he wasn't in the mood tonight. Any time but tonight he'd try his best to be an example for the young, something to strive for, no matter how many cracks and fissures his own soul truly had.

Not tonight. Not tonight... it has been exactly twenty years since...

"Sir!" The Squire was still huffing, but tried his best to concealed it. Poorly.

"What?" Arthur growled. The boy shook like an autumn leaf and saluted him.

"A package from General Garvey of the Minutemen, sir!" A slightly trembling hand put a small envelope on his desk. Arthur stared at it, dumbfounded, momentarily forgetting about the boy.

Garvey never contacted him. The man's disdain for Arthur and the Brotherhood was pretty apparent. In fact, ever since he left the Commonwealth to assume position of the High Elder Garvey's Minutemen were in the position of hostile neutrality with the Brotherhood. Gone we're the days of cooperation and begrudging mutual respect. With the enemy defeated and the only liaison both sides trusted wholeheartedly lost...

He frowned. And then he remembered the trembling Squire that stared at him with eyes as large as saucers.

"Dismissed," growled Arthur, and the boy, clearly relieved, darted away from his dark quarters and closed the heavy door behind him.

Sun was almost buried beyond the distant mountains. The Prydwen was always coursing between the different chapters of the Brotherhood, and yesterday they arrived to the Commonwealth from the west, their last stop on the way to the Citadel. Garvey's men at the Castle must have seen them hovering over the Boston Airport. The ragtag militia group had grown into the force to be reckoned with over the years. It would be wise not to mock them. 

Arthur had hoped he would not live to see the day when someone would do something stupid and a new war would break in the Commonwealth. He did not doubt that moment would one day come though. But that meant the Brotherhood would have to demolish the last legacy that still remained of her...

Her. Today was the day all his thoughts we're bound to return to her. No matter how hard he tried, every year on this day he would retreat to his quarters, think and mourn the days long gone and drink himself to sleep.

It will get better tomorrow. Though he did not expect that being here, in the Commonwealth, on this day, would be so hard. The past knocked into his mind the same way the Squire had knocked to his door. Sharp, clear, demanding.

He just needed another drink. But when he returned to his table with a full glass, a package wrapped in the yellowish paper was sitting there, waiting. Arthur sighed. After twenty years of dignified silence, what did Garvey have to say?

He must know what day this is. If this is some twisted attempt at getting at his nerves...

Paper scraps fell away and scattered on his table. An unmarked holotape sat on his palm. Arthur raised his brow. What in the world?

He had to rise from his seat again. His knees crackled in the protest but he ignored them. A record player was sitting on a side table, under a cloudy old mirror. Arthur met his own gaze for a second, but looked down immediately. He knew what he would see even without doing that, but old habits die hard. He did not want to see himself but it happened as if against his will every time. 

Dark brown of his hair and beard had long been painted ashen grey by stress, deep wrinkles set in the corners of his eyes, on his forehead and around thin lips. Dark circles surrounded the said bloodshot eyes, once piercing blue they now look dull and mudded. He looked more than ten years older than he really was and now he was certainly feeling like it.  

Arthur put the holotape in and hit the button. It can't be that important anyway. If it was Garvey would have come himself or at least sent a representative.

The tape was silent for a few seconds, with only static coming from the speakers. Arthur was about to head for the bar again but a single word came out of the record player.

"Hello."

A simple word that he probably heard hundreds of times every day, it froze him in his tracks, a violent shiver went from the tailbone up his spine. Arthur spun around wildly, a glass slipped from his suddenly weak fingers and flew to the corner where it shattered, just like his heart once.

"It's me."

It really was her. He'd know this voice from the million. The voice that once was called for him in his dreams and haunted his waking hours. He thought he was free. He was a fool.

Arthur slowly approached the small table as if it was a dangerous predator, unstable on his wobbly knees. He had to lean on the wall to steel himself. Cold metal under his palms assured him that this was real. He was not having another nightmare. This is happening. 

Many years of scouring the wastelands, countless resources and lives squandered. Nobody had ever seen a woman that matched her description, and search was futile. He had gave up nine years ago, finally coming to terms that Nora had probably met her end somewhere in the desolate wastes and that he would never find her. He'd never know why she left and how she died, no one will know.

He buried her in his memory, for it was the only burial he could give her. He was sure that it was all over. Until now.

"I was wondering if after all these years... you'd like to meet."

He laughed. It's a wonder he had not forgotten how. It was a bitter, almost bark-like sound that suddenly came from his throat. His lips made a weak, tortured, always crooked smile. The scar on his right cheek ran deep, severing muscles and sinews. He could not make a proper smile since he was thirteen years old, though not by choice. So he made a choice not to. Nora was the only one to ever see him smile, and he couldn't stop himself now too. 

"... to go over... everything."

Arthur took in a deep, ragged breath. His chest felt tight. Another forgotten, useless feeling, but he cherished it.

"I'm back in Commonwealth, dreaming... about who we used to be."

She used to be so much for so many people. Survivor. General. Sentinel. Protector. Savior. Friend.

Love.

He didn't even know who he really was back then. Warmonger? Oppressor? King?

A lost boy. 

"I'm sorry for everything that I've done."

It should be his words. It was he who drove her away, unwittingly. He was young and impulsive and naive. He thought... Arthur couldn't even remember what he thought. It was so long ago. But he knew the exact moment everything had changed. It was carved into his memory forever.

Acidic rain pouring down the poisoned earth. It burns the skin ever so slightly. Bunker door aghast, turrets still sparkling weakly from torn wires. Tall, muscular shadow inside, unmoving, like winter ice.

Grey, stormy eyes are challenging him. She is clutching the bull barrelled .44 in her hand, knuckles white, but doesn't raise it. Wet strands of dark hair are sticking to her determined, beautiful face. 

"I'm sorry for breaking your heart. I know you probably will never forgive me."

Nora's voice chased away the ghosts. She is speaking softly so he steps closer, listening in.

"If you find it in yourself to meet me, find me at Sanctuary. I will be waiting... as long as I can."

The tape clicked and the room fell silent.

Sanctuary. Place where it all begun. Her home. It was the very first place Arthur searched when she had gone missing. She was seen there, but nobody knew where she went. Or maybe they didn't want him to know.

It was deep in the Minutemen territory. They might consider this an act of aggression. This might be that stupid action he feared will drag the world back into the war. But right now he couldn't care less. 

Arthur stepped out of his quarters. Taking a deep breath he assumed the High Elder persona, straightening his back, hiding his raging emotions behind the cold, unmoving mask. Old trusty battlecoat laid unusually heavy on his shoulders.

"Get me a vertibird!" He bellowed.

-

Citizens of the Sanctuary stood silently along the battered road, staring at him. Like he was a prisoner, led to be executed. On the roofs Arthur could see the Minutemen, aiming their laser muskets at him. He glanced at the two paladins that escorted him and moved his head slightly from side to side. They stopped, exchanged looks between each other and reluctantly retreated back to the clearing where the vertibird had landed.

In the morning light under a dead oak stood a tall black man in that ridiculous dark blue colonial outfit, not unlike the one he remembered Nora sporting from time to time. A pompous old fashioned hat sat askew on his head. Salt-and-pepper beard cropped close, Preston Garvey, the famous - or infamous, depending on who you ask - General, scowled at his arrival.

"So I see you got the message, Maxson."

Arthur carefully looked around. He was surrounded and alone. A sudden realization chilled him to the bone. His hand twitched, itching to grab the gun.

"Garvey," he said slowly, buying time, his mind racing. "So was it all a trap?"

They stared at each other in the dead silence. He could hear the leaves rustle, and some distant bird gave a loud, overly cheery chirp.

"I wish it was..." finally muttered Garvey. He jerked his head toward Nora's old house. "Go."

Relief washed over Arthur like a wave. But he knew exactly how far a laser musket could fire, and had no intention to test his luck. He almost ran to the building, moving as fast as what remained of his dignity would allow him. His could hear his pulse in his ears.

Door opened silently on well oiled hinges, revealing a familiar room. A woman stood there, hands folded on her chest, leaning on an old counter. Twenty years melted away like morning mist when she smiled. 

"Arthur."

All the people who had ever called him by his given name were gone. All but one. It had been so long since he had heard the sound of his own name. 

"Nora..."

He was afraid to blink. Like she was a mirage that would be gone of he does.

"I wasn't sure you'd come."

Arthur blinked in surprise. When he opened his eyes a moment later she was still there.

"Of course I did. Nora, I've been looking everywhere for you for eleven years straight. I thought I've lost you forever."

He moved closer, reaching for her. It only taken him three steps to close the distance between them. He faintly registered the sound of the door closing behind him, but it didn't matter.

"There was a reason."

Her hands laid on his chest, stopping him gently yet firmly. The beautiful grey eyes of hers were looking past him, over his shoulder. Arthur sighed and turned to look at whatever was she looking at.

It felt like air had been punched out of his lungs. For a second he thought there was a mirror behind him. A mirror that somehow reflected him,  twenty years younger.

Worn but well maintained dark leather armor hugging a powerful, broad frame, sniper rifle slung behind the strong shoulder. Dark hair slicked back from the eyes, neatly cropped beard over the familiar cheeks. The prominent nose, broken a few times and set in place, chiseled cheeks, intense gaze.

But his eyes, the eyes were wrong. Grey like stormy sky, like steel itself. Nora's eyes.

And younger him could smile. The doppelganger smiled at Arthur, and illusion shattered. That was not him. He had never seen the young man but he immediately knew who he was. His head was spinning and he swayed on his feet, Nora's hand on his shoulder the only stable anchor in the whole mad world.

His son that he never knew existed was standing only two steps away. The living, breathing reason Nora went into hiding for. Why?..

To protect him from you, his mind dutifully answered. To protect him from becoming what you had become. A broken man fueled by desperation, anger and alcohol, too stubborn for his own good. 

"What," Arthur's voice was hoarse, his throat dry with terror, excitement and sorrow, "what is your name... son?"

"John," quietly answered young man, staring at him just as intensely. The resemblance was uncanny. 

Nora stepped between the two of them. She sighed heavily and then smiled, though it was a different kind of smile. It was tainted with pain for some reason that Arthur did not understand.

"Sweetheart, wait outside. You'll have time with your father soon enough. We have some unfinished business to attend to."

John stiffened and for a second an expression of deep pain twisted his features, but it disappeared just as quickly. He lingered in the door for a moment, but reluctantly stepped outside.

As soon as the door closed Arthur pulled Nora close, holding her for the first time in twenty long years. The emptiness that was gnawing at his insides had dissipated, and for the first time in his life he was at peace.

The other high ranking members of the Brotherhood had long given up their hopes of marrying him. Ever since he had became High Elder they couldn't technically force him to do that, though it didn't stop them from trying. For a really, really long time. He refused it all. He was content to die the last Maxson, with the cursed name that had ruined his life and countless others to be gone from this world. To be remembered as the last. The others were the numbers in the chain, but it would end with him.

Some gifted Scribe by the name Stewards already had wrote a romantic novel about his lost love. "Airship Down" it was called. The Elders were outraged and demanded her demotion, some insisted on exile. Arthur, chuckling inwardly, announced with a stern face that he had decided to forbid the book. His plan worked, and soon enough every single member of the Brotherhood was familiar with the story.

But here he was, his very own happy ending in sight. Arthur gently pressed his lips to Nora's forehead. Her silvery hair still had some dark strands woven into it, but her body pressed to his feels... frail. She is almost ten years older than him, though they always seemed to be of the same age.

He kissed his way down, gently touching her closed eyelid, her cheek, the tip of her nose with his lips. She opened her eyes, smiling, and Arthur felt her hands closing around his face, stroking his beard. Their kiss is tentative, not obscured by passion and overwhelming need of their youth. 

"I've never got the chance to ask," he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers, "the day I wanted to, you were gone."

"Arthur..."

"Would you marry me?.."

"I..."

He studied her face, familiar and yet foreign now, new scars where there were none before, tiny web of wrinkles on the dry, sunburnt skin.

What if there was someone else during those years? He had made himself a monk, abeit a heavily drinking one, but she had no such obligation.

"... yes."

It's barely a whisper, but he can hear it. 

"I love you, Nora. You know that, don't you?"

She smiled. His... their son had her smile. But there was something... he couldn't quite place it. She was hiding something. Something was was causing her pain, he could see it in her eyes.

"I love you too, Arthur. I always knew. You were pretty damn obvious."

A crooked smile was his answer. He looked away, the awkward boy who was barely out of his teens when he fell for her head over heels stirring in his chest.

"I've got a vertibird waiting. We could leave now."

She hummed quietly. 

"... Nora?"

"You go ahead. I have some things I need to finish before... we go."

Arthur remembered that her first husband was buried behind this very house. He nodded quietly, kissed her one more time and walked towards the door. Before he closed it all the way he noticed Nora exiting the house through the other door, heading for the backyard.

John was standing nearby, leaning on the wall. He must be nineteen now, almost as tall as Arthur himself, and the boy probably had a few more inches left in him.

He came to stand next to him, looking into the bright blue morning sky. 

A single gunshot rang in the crisp air, startling a flock of birds. Arthur froze. He knew from the sound that it was .44, just like the one Nora had always favored, just like the one she had on her hip when she left.

He spun around, but a strong hand caught his shoulder and squeezed it hard, almost to the point of pain. John looked up, his eyes we're dark and solemn.

"She was dying... father." Arthur stared at him in disbelief. No, no, this can't be happening... But he saw in his son's eyes that he was telling the truth.

"Post-war medicine can't treat cancer. The last year had been a torture for her, she lived on Med-X and even that wasn't enough to stop the pain completely. All she wanted before she died was to see you one last time."

Arthur Maxson stared into the skyline, shaking. The hot summer air made the distant trees blurry, though it didn't felt like...

He blinked, and hot, heavy tears rolled down his cheeks, instantly lost in the thick grey beard.

-

The Lost Hills is where Maxsons are buried, no matter where they die. Here lies his father, his mother. His grandfather. All the way up to Roger Maxson, all his ancestors lie here, under the layers of rock and earth. 

Today they welcome another. She never wore the name, but she was nevertheless one of them. She crossed the ages, she beat the odds. 

She was the mother of his son.

"Eleanora Maxson" the tombstone reads, "Savior of the Commonwealth. 2048-2307"

He doesn't know if he'd be able to stand the ceremony if not for his son's steadying hand on his shoulder. It gives him strength. It gives him hope where there was none.

It eases the dull ache in the place where his heart once was.

As he slowly walks away, giving John a moment to say goodbye, he can't help but feel proud.

Nora taught him everything she knew. How to survive the Wasteland, how to be fair, how think on his feet, how to fight, how to stand his ground. But most importantly she did something Arthur wouldn't have been able to teach him - how to be a good man.

It was his turn to teach him how to lead, teach him the strategy and tactics, the politics and economy, the code of the Brotherhood.

But whatever he would do would be built on top of the foundation Nora had taught him. That gave him hope. Perhaps the next era for the Brotherhood and for this world will start with John Maxson, a good man.

Perhaps there is hope for this world yet.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing in English, and my first fanfic in probably 3+ years. Please let me know if there is something that need to be fixed. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
